Chapter 178: o(#￣▽￣)=O)￣0￣")
Thirty minutes was plenty of time for a certain gap youkai to lose her mind — though honestly, that was just her baseline. Any day she wasn't losing her mind over something would be the actual anomaly. She'd be back to her usual bouncy self two minutes after the mute lifted anyway.
That aside: the Chat Group's slice-of-life female contingent was getting fairly substantial.
Kaguya, Umaru, Eriri — all three were from combat-free everyday worlds.
Which meant before joining the group, all three had been completely ordinary people with no special abilities to speak of.
The one exception being that none of them were short on money.
Kaguya was the young lady of the Shinomiya financial empire, one of Japan's largest conglomerates. Umaru's family background wasn't detailed in the source material, but her brother clearly had money — any new game, any new anime release, any limited-edition cola that came out, he'd have it in her hands on day one. And Eriri's father was a British diplomat, which put her firmly in the category of well-connected and well-funded — not to mention that her illustration side income was nothing to sneeze at given her sales numbers.
But aside from Kaguya, who's at a decent level now and sits comfortably in the Chat Group's mid-tier, the two new members just walked in as about as ordinary as humanly possible.
With that kind of baseline, trying to train either of them in the Six Powers, or Yukari's cultivation system, or even Ying Zheng's approach — they'd need Points spent on constitution upgrades first just to make any of it viable.
Ryū found himself muttering through the options. Should he do something about the new members' development?
At the rate the Chat Group was expanding, any everyday-world member who relied purely on sign-in Points was going to fall further and further behind. They might not even be able to keep pace with Sakura eventually, let alone anyone else.
Unless they got extraordinarily lucky and a group quest spawned in their world — then they could ride that windfall to a meaningful upgrade. But that was exactly the kind of thing that required luck so rare it bordered on unreasonable. Under normal circumstances the odds were low.
So far only Ryū, Kaguya, and Ying Zheng had ever benefited from that route — and they were the three luckiest members in the group.
Left to grow on their own without any guidance, by the time Ryū was strong enough to rival a star-level combatant, Umaru and Eriri would probably clock in at roughly… pre-combat-training Josuke? The version of Josuke who only had his Stand and nothing else?
Pre-training Josuke was solidly bottom-tier on raw combat ability. His Stand's ability was a special case, sure — but the point stood.
The problem is how to actually develop them. Raw talent can only be pushed so far without foundation upgrades. Though it doesn't have to be about power levels — building their combat instincts and practical experience is equally worthwhile.
The one major obstacle is that cross-world travel costs a thousand Points round trip, which is genuinely steep. The only realistic alternative is Arena versus mode — a hundred Points for twenty-four hours, which works out to roughly one Point per fifteen minutes or so.
That's manageable. Start by teaching them the fundamentals of whichever training system they want to pursue, then gradually build up their adaptability and real combat exposure. That way even if their raw strength catches up later, they won't be in the same position I was — power at eighty percent output because the experience base wasn't there to back it up.
"…"
Ryū privately considered himself a cautionary tale. He'd had no senior members to learn from, so everything had been trial and error — which meant a lot of bad habits accumulated before he even noticed them. Fixing those gaps had cost him Arena deaths he was still not thrilled about. Twenty deaths just to patch one flaw last time. And that almost certainly wasn't the only flaw he had. There were probably many more.
He wasn't going to let the new members walk the same road.
So he went to find the muted Yukari.
They spent a solid ten-plus minutes in private chat working through it, because the scope of what he had in mind was large enough to need a proper plan.
Yukari was in full petty-fury mode from the mute, but she wasn't going to turn down something that genuinely benefited the group's new members — especially when those new members were part of the group's rare female contingent.
Eternally Seventeen: It's fine, it's fine~ I taught Little Kaguya before, so running the same programme for Eriri and Umaru-chi is completely LGTM.
Eternally Seventeen: Even if they want to learn the Six Powers, Observation Haki, Armament Haki — no problem, I know all of those~
Eternally Seventeen: And they won't need to spend Points either. I can just teach them directly.
RawrSoFierce: Then I'll leave the two new members' development in your hands!
Eternally Seventeen: Speaking of which — since when did the Admin start caring this much about other members? In my memory you've always been the distinctly aloof, standoffish, unapproachable type~
RawrSoFierce: …When have I ever been aloof and unapproachable.
Eternally Seventeen: I understand now!! Admin — could it be that you're… trying to end your single streak!! How terrifying, you really are trying to win over the underage girls in this group!!
RawrSoFierce: ???
RawrSoFierce: o(#￣▽￣)=O)￣0￣")
"…"
Meanwhile —
In Gensokyo —
Yukari sat with a contemplative expression on her elegant face, amusement flickering behind her eyes.
"The Admin really didn't need to ask," she murmured to herself. "I would have done it anyway. They're female members — as the self-proclaimed big sister of this Chat Group, looking after new girl members is basically my job description. But he's not wrong about the core issue. Now that they're in the Dimensional Chat Group, they need to start real training immediately."
"Relying on daily sign-in Points alone to grow — they'd never close the gap. It would only get wider and wider. And once the gap gets too large, they won't be able to participate in quests when they spawn. Can't participate in quests, stuck with only sign-in income, stuck falling further behind — it becomes a loop with no exit."
"So the Admin wants to break that loop. Very sensible." She paused. "Though there's almost certainly another motive in there as well. He's clearly angling for both new members, given that they're both so unbearably cute."
Yukari's internal monologue had never once in her long existence taken the high road.
She was a gap youkai completely devoid of restraint. Had been for centuries.
Then again, no one in Gensokyo had much restraint to speak of.
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